Is Methylene Blue The Key To Lasting Vitality? Defying Disease, Revitalizing Cells, And Safeguarding Your Prostate From Cancer With Dr. John Lieurance

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, there's been some studies showing that both silver and gold and methylene blue even further enhance this whole photodynamic— it's called photobiomodulation.

And you're talking about like oral silver and gold? You take it orally?

Well, the protocol we did in the clinic, we did IV silver, and then we have a gold that will have people nebulize, or we'll put it in their eyes, we'll do intranasal gold. And so, that's the delivery we do right before we run the methylene blue and then we do the intravenous red light.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this. All right, so it's been a crazy past few days. I showed up in, in Sarasota, Florida, and I, I always know that I'm in for a wild ride when I arrive here because it is the haunting grounds of my friend Dr. John, who's here with me. Dr. John's been on the podcast, what, like 3 times? Yeah, I think before. The first time you arrived at my house and showed me all my crazy tools I could do to upgrade my body. You're the guy that taught me how to put in my first suppository. You didn't do it for me, but you gave me some friendly advice on how to do it. And, that included a handstand at the very end or some form of inversion. And, of course, since then, I've been a champion of melatonin suppositories and NAD suppositories. And, I learned from you, I believe you call it— what do you call it? Gashen's protocol, putting things into every orifice of the body, which we can get into later on, like different delivery mechanisms that go beyond just eating stuff. Yeah. And then, um, you know, I, I've explored all sorts of different areas with you. I'm going to link in the show notes if folks go to bengreenfieldlife.com/magicbullet. That's bengreenfieldlife.com/magicbullet. Links to all of the other shows that I've done with John where you can get to know him, his background, his intriguing story, a little bit more. But anyways, back to my TED Talk of an introduction here. I showed up in Florida and John whisked me away to his clinic where he proceeded to adjust all the bones in my skull with a cranial balloon reset and—

Well, we did that eye test first.

Yeah, inject me with stem cells and he tested my eyes before and after to see how this was affecting my vision, this cranial balloon adjustment that he did. Stem cells, stem cell infusion with a special form of stem cell that he uses at his clinic. But then, most intriguing and relevant to the meat of today's topic, John put me on a methylene blue IV, which is crazy. It's literally methylene blue under red light. And then, here's the kicker, he took this big huge long needle and injected my prostate gland with methylene blue and with Ozone. And, I almost wanted to title this podcast episode "Barking Elephants" because for any guy out there, just know this, if you get your prostate gland injected with ozone, you basically feel like you have to pee but when you go to pee, only gas comes out. And so, my sons were laughing quite a bit when I called them on the phone and told them that Dad was farting out his you-know-what. And then, John said, "Well, yeah, that's why we call this the barking elephant procedure." So, Anyways, as you guys can imagine though, tons of very, very cutting-edge and outside-the-box modalities that John experiments with. But, what I really want to focus on today is this book. I'm going to hold it up for the camera. It's called "Methylene Blue: The Magic Bullet." Now, what I'm holding is the advanced copy that John sent to me. If you get this book, it's not going to look like it got printed at Kinko's. But, I learned so much in reading this book. I went through it when you first sent it to me and then again. On the plane ride down. And, people hear about methylene blue and basically the general echo chamber is, "Yeah, it's good for your mitochondria, bro," but there's so much more to it than that. And so, the very first question I have for you because I think this is going to be important for just setting the foundation for this show is how do you describe methylene blue to people when they ask what it is?

Well, I titled my book "Magic Bullet" because In the early 1900s, Paul Ehrlich was a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, and he was the one that discovered that methylene blue was the cure for malaria. And, that's what really put methylene blue on the map as a medicine.

But, prior to that point, it was just like a— was it a textile dye? People say it's a fish tank cleaner.

Well, listen. So, it stains tissues, right? So, they used it in biology pretty regularly. And, in fact, there was a discovery where they didn't know the dendrites would grow off of neurons. And, there was a famous neuroscientist that used methylene blue to be able to first discover that the neuroplasticity event when you have connections with new nerves because methylene blue has an affinity to the mitochondria. And, because nerve cells are so rich in mitochondria, those nerve cells light up a lot bluer than the surrounding tissue.

And, is that why people say when you use methylene blue, a large percentage of it winds up in your brain?

Yes.

And, your heart. And, is that true when people say that, that it actually does wind up in your brain?

Yeah, yeah. It goes to all your nerves in your body.

Okay, okay. Got it.

It goes to all your mitochondria. And so, the most energy-demanding tissues in the body are going to get the most methylene blue.

Now, back to where it comes from, You said that it began to be used as an anti-malarial? Yes. Okay.

This is the first medical indication.

Isn't that similar to what hydroxychloroquine is?

Well, so methylene blue is the father compound to hydroxychloroquine. The chloroquine family of drugs was modeled after methylene blue. So, the problem early on is they found out that methylene blue was just terrific for infections and keeping people from getting sick as well. And so, they didn't like the fact that they were peeing blue. People were like, "Well, yeah, I like the effect," but they were complaining of the—

Now, trust me, I know your toilet over there. We're at John's house, by the way, for those of you wondering. And, he keeps giving me different forms of methylene blue eye drops and he's got the troches and creams and even this suppository, which is why I thought your book was called "Magic Bullet" because the suppository shaped like a bullet. So, I've been peeing blue since I got here. Yeah, I get what you're saying. I know it was all over the toilet seat. Actually, it's cleaned up now.

Yeah, yeah. Well, newer toilets do better, but the older toilets that are porous, you have to be careful. You really have to be careful with staining a lot of things with methylene blue. So, once you kind of figure out how to navigate handling it, the problem doesn't really come up, but you definitely have to understand that once it stains something, you're not likely to get it out.

My wife has gotten pissed at me a few times. I've stained a few things and I felt so good when I walked into your house. And, within being here like an hour, I think I noticed at least 4 different methylene blue stains on random rugs and carpets. So, I'm like, "Okay, I'm safe.

My house is not as stained as yours is." So, you can really trust an individual if there's a lot of stains of methylene blue because you know they're going to be neurologically stable.

That's true. That's true. It's a sign of intelligence. So, methylene blue has this background in medicine as an antimalarial, but now it seems like the popular way that people are using it goes way beyond that. So, when did it first became something that you started using in your practice?

Well, I first learned about it maybe 12 years ago. And, I was reading about it even further back than that actually. A colleague of mine was running it as an IV for Alzheimer's. But, back then, they were using such a light dose. It was like 5 milligrams. And, I wasn't seeing the result. I played with it a little bit. I mean, this might have been even almost 20 years ago. And, a lot of research has been done on that. Francisco González Lima is someone that is an authority with utilizing methylene blue for a number of indications for neurological conditions. And so, I researched some of the studies that he was coming out with and then we started to use higher doses.

Higher than 5? Yeah.

Okay. We started using doses that were in the range of under 4 milligrams per kilogram of body weight because that was kind of the upper limit that they found. So, um, and we can kind of dial in on dosage.

4 milligrams, if I weighed like 80 kilograms, you're talking about like 320 milligrams or so?

Yeah.

So a lot higher than 5.

Yeah. Okay. Now that would be— that dose would be like a one-time dose that, say, if you had cyanide poisoning and you went to the hospital, literally all hospitals are required to carry methylene blue because it's the cure for methylhemoglobinemia and cyanide poisoning. So, these people report to the hospital, they do this infusion and it's a cure.

Oh, wow. I didn't know hospitals had methylene blue.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Another really interesting fact is that blood banks, what they do is they inject a little bit of methylene blue into the blood that's donated and then they irradiate the blood with near-infrared. And, that's how they sterilize the blood. So, anybody that's gotten a blood transfusion has actually gotten a little bit of methylene blue.

Ben Greenfield: Now, there was a guy that recently wrote a report on methylene blue, a friend of mine actually, Chris Masterjohn. And, in that article, he said some good things about it. He cautioned a little bit against high dosage. But, one thing that stood out to me is he said it rewires the electron transport chain, rewires the electron transport chain, which I think is an interesting way to think about it. But, when you look at methylene blue, and this is something I learned from your book, it appears to have this unique ability you don't see in chemistry very much to accept electrons and also donate electrons. I think you called it the pleiotropic effect. What's that mean exactly they can do that and why is it important?

Ben Greenfield: So, it's a pro-oxidant and an antioxidant. And, this magic comes from this thiazine ring. And so, I think about the thiazine ring like the catcher, right? It's able to catch electrons. And then, there's something called amine which can deliver electrons. And so, it's almost like a pitcher and a catcher throwing a ball back and forth. The electrons can just go back and forth independent of oxygen. And, that's why like with cyanide, it occupies the oxygen and so people are starving from oxygen. So, when you give methylene blue, they're able to actually make energy without having to utilize oxygen.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, if I take methylene blue and it is getting absorbed into the body, where's it actually going? What's it actually doing? Is it entering into the cell? Is it attaching to the membrane of the cell? Is it interacting with the mitochondria inside the cell? Do you know what the actual mechanism would be?

Well, so absorption-wise, I think this is a good point, is it's extremely absorbable orally. And where you want it to absorb is the stomach. You don't want it to go into the small intestines or the large intestines because then it can have a negative impact on the microbiome.

But what about when you do the suppository?

Well, so the suppository would probably not be a good idea to do long-term. Okay. Right. But if an individual was looking to deal with an acute condition, especially with something like that and introducing light therapy.

And, would you not want to do it long-term because it might impact the colonic flora in some way?

Exactly.

So, it just cleans things out too much. Right.

Okay.

Yeah. Got it. Alright. So, it shouldn't be in the small intestine or the large intestine, it gets absorbed, but you said from the stomach or—

Well, you preferably want to have a delivery system where it's So, encapsulating it would not be a good idea because those capsules oftentimes don't open up until they get into the small intestine. That's why we created the bar. So, the bar—

When you say bar, you're not talking like an energy bar, it's like a little trochee, right?

Yeah, it looks like this. It's a trochee but not meant to dissolve unless you— if you want your mouth blue, you can dissolve it.

Okay.

So, you cut it into whatever dosage that you want, you drop it in the back of your throat and then drink something down.

Okay.

And then, it'll just completely dissolve right in the stomach. Now, the other option—

So, you don't have to do the blue mouth thing?

You don't have to do the blue mouth thing.

Why do people say you got to let it dissolve in your mouth?

Because they're misguided or they're trying to promote maybe the product that they have that dissolves in the mouth.

Okay.

So, a lot of people use drops and that's another option as well. So, between the drops and something like what we have would be the best way to deliver methylene blue.

And when you say the drops, oral drops or eye drops?

You can get drops that you have methylene blue and you can drop it into water or you can just deliver it straight into the mouth.

Ben Greenfield: That's like what BioBlue, I think, has drops. But then, you've got the eye drops also. And, I want to talk about those in a little bit because there's this weird thing going on with the eyes. I think you said the locus coeruleus or whatever. And, I want to get into that because I'm fascinated by it. So, the delivery mechanism, you can swallow and then it gets into the stomach. And then, what happens after that?

So, it gets right into the bloodstream. And, methylene blue is a very small molecule, so it has no problem crossing the blood-brain barrier.

It gets absorbed into the bloodstream from the stomach.

Crossing the cell membrane, crossing the membrane of the mitochondria. It just gets right in.

Okay. And then, once it has crossed the cell membrane of the mitochondria, that's where back to this thiazine and amide, I think you said amide. Would take place where the thiazine would allow it to contribute electrons.

I mean, I-M-I-N-E.

I mean, okay, so the thiazine could donate electrons and those could travel through the electron transport chain and allow for more production of ATP. And then if you needed to recycle certain factors and accept electrons, that's where the isine, I mean, would come in And, that's where you could do things like recycle, let's say, like NAD, for example, to restore some of the byproducts of cellular metabolism.

So, there's 4 complexes in the mitochondria. Okay. And, the job of the mitochondria— mitochondria is really a fascinating structure. It's like a little micro rotor and it goes 9,000 RPMs. These little rotors producing ATP. And so the electrons are moving through this chain. And so the mitochondria's job is to move electrons, and in the process of moving electrons, it's exothermic, so it produces heat. And we take that chemical heat-making mechanism, and it produces ATP, and it moves it through these four complexes. And there's been a lot of, um, uh, molecules that they've looked at that enhance mitochondria, but there's nothing that they've seen that works on all 4 complexes. So, the research shows that it enhances mitochondria up to 30%. And so, the—

When you say enhances mitochondria, specifically ATP production? Yes. Or efficiency of ATP production? Yes.

Okay. Yes. And, the efficiency as well because when you look at efficiency, you're thinking about in terms of how much oxidation is released from that process, how much pollution basically like an automobile that might not be— like an older automobile that's hogging a lot of gas and producing a lot of pollution versus a newer car that's more efficient, uses less gasoline, less pollution. And so, we want these young healthy mitochondria because that pollution creates a lot of inflammation in our body and it's really linked to aging and a lot of diseases.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, okay, got it. So, mitochondria, the mitochondria are charged up, so to speak, by this methylene blue. But, where does light come in? Why are so many people including you, you gave me an IV and I literally had a methylene blue drip IV but you had a little light attached to the IV stand, took a picture of us on my Instagram. I could probably put it in the shownotes as well if you guys want to see what it looks like. And, the light's irradiating the blue as it goes into my bloodstream. It's the sexiest-looking IV ever. But, what exactly is the reason that you combine it with the light?

Well, so the last protein complex which is called cytochrome C, cyto meaning cell, chrome meaning light.

The last of the 4 that you described.

Right. It's designed so that we can take— we've got some beautiful sunlight coming in here to the living room and we can take those photons, but the photons photons don't have an easy time making it into the cells of our body because our skin is designed to block the rays, right? I mean, most of these photons don't make it past the first millimeter of skin. That's why you start getting into some of these lasers and red light and with the SaunaSpace with the incandescent lights, which I think are more penetrating than most. It can get deeper into the body and those photons get delivered to that cytochrome C and the photons can be used as energy just like the electrons. So, we can use either a photon or an electron to make energy.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. That actually makes really good sense. So, when we were talking about methylene blue donating electrons to the electron transport chain, you're saying that photons from light, particularly from what I understand the red light spectrum, can contribute photons that would also act in the same way as electrons in the electron transport chain.

Right. So then you have like an enhancement. So it's a synergistic effect that the light has with the methylene blue.

And is the light somehow also interacting with methylene blue to make it more effective?

Well, so methylene blue is blue, right?

Yeah.

And so it's going to reflect blue and absorb red, right? So that's why it's absorbing exactly the most penetrating type of photons, which is those red and near-infrared spectrum. So, that's perfect for methylene blue. So, you really want to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 660 nanometers when you're looking at these red light, which most of the red light panels, a lot of these devices, the lasers that we use for inner ear regeneration and we use lasers on your knee when we did your procedure. These are all very commonly within that kind of 660.

Yeah. Well, you're a man after my own heart with the red light. When I arrived here the other night, just so you guys know, John's whole house is just red and it's incandescent light. And I got a red light lamp in my room and a little red light therapy device at my bedside and a red heating lamp. And the whole place is just red. If you guys have never experienced outfitting your house to be red by night and then sunlit or just naturally lighting like incandescent or halogen by day, it's a game changer. Totally. For sleep especially. Yeah. So, red light plays well with methylene blue.

Yeah.

Do you know of anything else that you would stack with methylene blue to enhance the effect?

For sure, silver and gold. That's why we put silver and gold in the blue eyes.

You were about to sing a Christmas song, silver and gold.

Well, so silver and gold are extremely what's called photodynamic. So, this is a whole conversation about how light can interact with substances in our body to even further enhance this effect through the cytochrome C. And so, there's been some studies showing that both silver and gold and methylene blue even further enhance this whole photodynamic. It's called photobiomodulation.

And, you're talking about oral? Silver and gold? You take it orally?

Well, the protocol we did in the clinic, we did IV silver, and then we have a gold that we'll have people nebulize or we'll put it in their eyes or we'll do intranasal gold. And so, that's the delivery we do right before we run the methylene blue and then we do the intravenous red light.

Okay. What about so-called other agents that act similarly to methylene blue in terms of their interaction with red light like shilajit or photosyanins like spirulina and chlorella or anything like that?

They're all amazing photodynamic and some of them are better than others. I would put methylene blue at the top of the list. And then, you have things like sterile still bean and fisetin and quercetin and green tea extract. And riboflavin is amazing, especially if you're looking to have an antimicrobial effect. There's been some really good studies about infusing riboflavin, which an individual at home could take it orally and then go into the sun or go into a sauna. And, they were actually showing that it was having a huge impact on COVID, Epstein-Barr, HIV.

Ben Greenfield: That's amazing even though you're not allowed to say that. I'm joking. I'm looking at the label for this Lumitol Blue. This is a blue bar you're talking about. You actually have that in here. Phycocyanin. I didn't realize this. EGCG, lutein, quercetin, curcumin, riboflavin. And then you got a probiotic blend. So you have a lot of that stuff already in here. You don't— how come you don't put silver and gold in here? It's too expensive?

Well, um, that might be a next generation. So what we have people do is take, take silver orally Yeah. So, they'll get a silver product and they'll use that at the same time. Okay.

So, we're about to go play pickleball in the sunshine after this, so I should put one of these. And, how much do you take? I'm just going to show on the camera how this is done. You slide it out like this. Boring podcast as you listen to the audio version. And then, I would just swallow half of this? Yeah. All right. You want one?

I already took some.

Okay. All right. Tastes pretty good. My dentist commented the last time I was at the— so, so you— your mouth is so blue right now. I'm chasing it with some water. It's all right, it's on brand, bro.

Yeah, normally we put it in the back of the throat and drink down, but you know, I'm a rookie. It's not really that big of a deal that your mouth is blue because it'll, it'll clear up.

It's not gonna stain or anything. Yeah, yeah. Okay, um, speaking of staining, by the way, how do you get rid of stains, like if it does get on the floor, toilet, or anything like that? You got any secret methods?

There's a solution that a friend of mine discovered, and I'm actually— I thought there was a bottle laying around. I forgot the brand, but I know we did a podcast the last year at Elements of Vitality, and I think we highlighted it. So, you're going to have to go back and watch that one. Yeah.

I found swishing my mouth with baking soda helps out quite a bit.

Vitamin C is really good for that because Well, there's a form of methylene blue called leukomethylene blue, and that's basically white. So, that's the reduced form of methylene blue. And, it's actually a good hack to take vitamin C along with methylene blue because that'll even enhance the absorption into the cells. One thing that I find interesting is that some people don't find that their urine turns blue as much. And yeah, I've heard reports back that means you're not really using it properly. No, it means that you've got a lot of vitamin C. Oh. And so it, it converted into leuko. So if people either have a lot of tissue vitamin C or if they're consuming vitamin C, they may not have a lot of blue in the urine.

Does that mean that the vitamin C is impacting the effectiveness of the methylene blue, like it's not working as well? Not— it's just turning a different color.

It, it, it just— it— what? Yeah, it takes the color out of it, but it's not going to minimize the effect. In fact, it enhances it.

I briefly mentioned that you're kind of like into using different orifices for delivery mechanisms, you know, beyond just making me emit gas out of my genitals. Uh, so the, the idea behind this, I think you described to me as a protocol— was the Gershon, Gashon something like that that you learned in terms of different ways that you could introduce compounds into the body? Gashin's protocol? Am I remembering that right? Mm-mm. Okay. I'm not remembering that. Okay. Well, anyways, I think it's actually in the book somewhere. I wrote down a note that it is Gōnish, the Gōnish protocol. Anyways, It's this idea of different— yeah, Dr. John Ganesh protocol. And in the book somewhere, yeah, Ganesh protocol, like you go in— oh, Ganesh, Ganesh, Ganesh.

Okay, so sorry, I should have done my homework.

Okay, take care of your doorways, it says. Right, so get into that.

Okay, all right. So Ganesh is the Hindu, um, they call the Hindu lord of doorways, right? And so in In Hindu, they see Ganesh as the bouncer. So, they pray to Ganesh and Ganesh will let you into heaven, right? So, a lot of times you'll see t-shirts that says like "Remover of Obstacles." And so, I look at doorways as orifices, right? So, we have doorways, our nasal, our mouth, our ears, our eyes, our anus, right? So, when I look at healing, what I discovered is that at the core of all diseases is one thing, which is there are stressors that result in inflammation that shut down mitochondrial energy production. And then, disease will present itself uniquely with each of us based on our genes, right? So, if we can't adapt to a stressor, then the body doesn't have the energy to adapt from the mitochondria. And, once you hit that threshold, then the body goes into a disease state. Like, if you had an infection and you're fighting that infection and your immune cells need mitochondria, they need ATP to do their job to kill whatever infection it is, but if that inflammation hits a a certain level, there's something called the cell danger response.

Yeah, CDR. I've heard of this before.

And so, what in essence— there's another term for that. It's called the Warburg effect. So, Otto Warburg was a very famous researcher who discovered that cancer and oxygen can't coexist. And, he realized that with cancer is that there's a switch from the energy being made in that electron transport chain, which is what we talked about earlier, out of the mitochondria into the cytosol and it's called fermentation. And, you only get about 10% of the ATP through that process versus the mitochondria. The mitochondria is like epically effective to make energy. And, that switch happens when the cytokines or the inflammation reaches a certain threshold. And so, for a lot of people that might have been watching the news and hearing about the cytokine storm where people would die from COVID This is where the infection raised the inflammation and it hit a certain level and then the individuals shifted to fermentation where they didn't have— it's like imagine if you have a battle and you have 100 warriors out there and then all of a sudden, 90 of them got killed and you have to fight this battle with 10 people, right? You're going to lose that war. So, it's the same thing with the white blood cells. You're fighting this battle and then you get demolished. And so, this is literally happening when it could be the flu. Most older people will get pneumonia and they'll die.

Ben Greenfield: From the flu.

This is one of the most common ways that our elderly people people pass is they get the pneumonia. And so, this is happening because as you get older, your mitochondria become weaker and weaker. So, you're more susceptible to this switch, this Warburg effect. Also, cancer is more common as people get older because their mitochondria aren't as strong. In fact, mitochondria health is at the core of cancer.

Is this one reason why some people will recommend ozone in conjunction with chemotherapy or even as a standalone treatment for cancer because cancer cells can't survive in the presence of oxygen?

So, that and if you use ozone, ozone is activating PGC-1-alpha. This is a gene pathway that Extreme exercise, cold plunge, fasting, some of these extreme like hormetic activities activate this PGC-1 alpha.

And yeah, I talked about it, by the way, my very first book Beyond Training. I wrote all about the PGC-1 alpha pathway and how to trigger it through. It's amazing, like a minimum effective dose of training, right?

So, so what the, the, that's a sensor that activates mitochondrial biogenesis. So it activates mitophagy. So, imagine, think about it like this. We have this signaling and this sensing in our cells where all of a sudden you have all this oxidation, right? It's like in our clinic, we do an infusion of ozone, right? You can also do rectal. And so, all of a sudden, there's all this oxidation because the ozone interacts with tiny little fat particles in your blood and then you get oxidized lipids that are then signaling inside the blood. And then, the sensing is like, "Wow, where's all this oxidation coming from?" And, that's saying, "Well, there must be a bunch of dysfunctional mitochondria." So then, it goes in and it says, "We need to recycle all these old mitochondria." So, it's signaling this mitophagy, which is cleaning and recycling old mitochondria, and then mitochondrial biogenesis where then you produce produce all these new mitochondria.

Is that part of why hormetic stressors work, is mitophagy? They're actually killing and then recycling new mitochondria?

Partly, yeah, depending on which hormetic stressor. But, the ones that we're talking about like exercise and ozone is a really epic way to activate this pathway. Yeah, yeah. And, people can actually do fasting. And, what I like to do is is use ozone during their fasting phase if you want to get a deeper—

because fasting would already activate—

you're already in autophagy, but then you want to really kick that.

I've never thought about pairing, uh, fasting with ozone, but the mechanism of action would make sense if you wanted to get accelerated results from the fasting. Yeah, interesting. So back to ozone for a second. I realize this is a little bit of a rabbit hole, but why the heck did you inject my prostate? With ozone. Bastard. It did hurt for a couple hours afterwards. I'll admit I had an ice pack on my lower abdomen. But, describe that to people. I'd never heard of doing that before and you told me it's incredible, but explain to people why.

Well, yeah. I mean, methylene blue is achy when it's injected into the body. So, we did put an anesthetic in there, so it was better than it would normally be, but it aches for a couple of hours and then it feels amazing. We've used methylene blue injected into some joints. And, I've had it injected into a few of my joints. And, I mean, it hurts but it's tolerable. And then, all of a sudden, it just feels amazing. So, prostate, I'm glad you asked me that because it's a huge problem, right? I mean, benign prostatic hypertrophy— Yeah.

Some of the ones say all guys, if they don't die of prostate cancer, die with prostate cancer. Exactly. I don't know if that's true, but—

Yeah. So, the problem is the prostate is kind of encapsulated. So, it's a breeding ground for infection. And so, we accumulate infections and molds and fungus and so forth.

And, these can also be contracted to a partner, right?

They can, yeah, through the semen. Okay. That's where we test people. So, we have a protocol in our clinic where we're we're really exciting where what we're doing with prostate is we do a prostate, a semen test. So, there's a kit that we can send to their house. They test their semen and just about everybody has some level of infection in the prostate, right? And so, then we can see what microbes are there and we can match. Sometimes we may take a couple of antibiotics because the report tells us which antibiotics work against those microbes. So, the cocktail that we'll generally use with this prostate injection is 2 or 3 different splashes of antibiotics, some PRP because that's your natural immune cells, and methylene blue, a certain level of methylene blue. And then, afterwards, we chase it with some ozone. And that has just been a game changer for everything from people having to wake up frequently urinating, which is a sign that you have some swelling of the prostate.

I don't know if it's placebo, but the past 2 nights I've gotten up to pee. Last night I didn't. I actually— well, I went to bed early and I was in bed reading and it was one of those things where right before I got to bed or went to sleep, I was like, "Oh, gosh, I should get up to pee." But then, the night before, I didn't get up to pee during the night. Early in the morning when I finally woke up, I did because usually I'll pee sometimes 2 or 3 times during the night. So, since I've gotten the injection, at least so far, knock on wood, it's at least had that effect. My PSA has always been somewhat low, but what I find most intriguing about this, my wife's going to kill me for saying this, but I'm going to say it anyways, is when my wife and I began to have more unprotected sex, she started getting more UTIs and yeast issues and fungus. And, it's possible that I could have had infections in my prostate that I was contracting to her, right?

Yeah. Well, that was the conversation that we had that led to why don't we go ahead and do this. We normally test the semen, which we just didn't have time. So, you're there and it's like, "Well, let's go ahead and do it." Yeah, yeah.

Interesting. And then, you didn't do stem cells in the prostate, but I think you have a special form of stem cells that you're using now in your clinic. You did them in my knee. Yes, I was. And, I believe also in because you have X-Cells. I haven't talked about X-Cells. Yeah, not the spreadsheets.

Yeah, so the X-Cells are a line of stem cells that are extremely exciting. I've been in, in this field for almost 20 years. I mean, we were one of the first clinics to use bone marrow, and we were doing liposuctions and dissolving the fat and ultrasound guidance injected into various joints and so forth. So, you know, I've been with a lot of technologies over the years. And so, these cells, they're considered adipose-derived stem cells. So, they come from fat. We're able to get them. So, they're frozen and we take them out of the freezer. From who? Well, we have a partner that is giving free liposuctions to young healthy volunteers. You can sell your fat. That's amazing. So, they take the cells from the fat and they take it through a process and they don't accept people that have been vaccinated, highly vetted, and then it's highly purified. So, people thinking about, okay, I want to go to Mexico, I want to go to Panama because I want to get these expanded placental stem cells.

Yeah, I hear that all the time. Everybody's like, "I'm not going to get my stem cells done in the U.S. because it's not as good." Right.

And, it's like $20,000, $25,000. Yeah. So, placental stem cells, their survivability is hours. That's it. They don't survive long. That's why some of these clinics will do infusions 3 days in a row because they're trying to get that, you know, that action. These cells last weeks. And so, the way that stem cell therapy works is it used to be that we thought that a stem cell would migrate to a certain tissue. So, damaged tissues that are inflamed home in and attract the stem cells. And so, they go to that damaged area and they stick to that area and then they start to excrete exosomes. So, a lot of people might be hearing about exosomes and you can get placental-derived exosomes that you can use to inject into various parts of the body and IV and people are doing IVs. And so, that's like I would think about exosomes as being the juice where the stem cell is the orange, right? So, it's the stemness from the stem cell. And, those exosomes are packets of something called RNA, which is just information. So, those packets of information are going to go in there and signal the existing cells and tissues to go into a youthful growth repair phase. So ultimately, it's your own cells basically regrowing themselves. It's not the stem differentiating as much. That does happen sometimes. And, the X-cells are 4 times more faster at differentiating than placental stem cells. So, I find them to be superior. And, I've done treatments over the years with just about everything. I've gone to Mexico. I've seen it all. I've done it all. I've never felt as much of an improvement since I did this particular line. I was in the gym.

Do a lot of people know about these yet? Because I had never heard of them.

Well, they're going to know, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, they're not new.

Do you still combine them with exosomes, these X-Cells?

Sometimes, yeah. When you start getting into this area of regenerative medicine, you don't want to have someone that's like trying to just shoot everything with the same thing. So, there's so many different presentations. There's so many different types of tissues in the body, types of injuries. The tear could be big or small. You have to be able to see these things on ultrasound to know what you're dealing with and then guide the injection under ultrasound. And so, once you can really appreciate what you're trying to treat, then you start to match it with the different— like sometimes bone marrow is epic. I mean, we've been using bone marrow for different things. Instead of fats? Fat's good too. Fat is really epic, right? Except the liposuction can be a little bit of a challenge.

I know.

I got it once.

It was so hard because I'm so lean.

Especially for us people that are lean.

Stabbing my back for hours.

Yeah. Yeah. So, as Harry Adelson, does in his clinic. I remember way back looking at Harry doing the bone and the adipose, and we had been doing the same. I called it maripose. And so, we were doing the same protocol. We were doing a lipo and we would inject the fat and the bone marrow. And I mean, we had people with just emaciated knees, bone-on-bone knees that were back out playing tennis. And, I'd see them 10 years later. They would come in and they'd do one knee they'd be saying, "Hey, I need to do this other knee." So, the durability on the treatment system.

Every time I get a treatment on my knee, it gets better and better. 3 years ago, I could barely walk. That's how bad it was and it was constantly swollen. I couldn't play tennis, couldn't play pickleball. Now, I would rate it at 85% to 90%. After what we did the other day, kind of settles in and everything, I'm very curious to see how it continues to progress. But yes, this works and I haven't actually had to get surgery. These are minimally invasive procedures. So, I know that there's a lot of little areas that we're diving into right now, but this one I really want to talk about. Holding it up, it's called Blue Eyes, methylene blue silver eye drops. You sent me these a month ago. Yeah. I started using. They're fantastic. I wake up in the morning, I have my big glass of water, and before I go down and flip on the red lights in my office, I've been putting 2 or 3 drops of methylene blue methylene blue into my eyes. And, I'd rather you explain why this is. I know it comes back to the protocol that I butchered, Gashen, Garshen, Ganesh. I was close. It's not a doctor, it's a Hindu god, Ganesh. But, why the eyes with methylene blue? What's going on?

Well, so I had a friend and she owns some— Leila Centner, some people might be You're familiar with Julia?

Yeah, I met her the other day. She's fantastic. That whole academy, that EMF-free school that she's building in Miami, it's nuts.

Yeah. So, she sent me a picture. She got an eye infection and there was a strain of COVID that was affecting the eyes. And so, it just immediately popped into my mind that we need to make a silver blue, methylene blue with silver eye drop. And then, I thought, well, some EDTA would be really good because that will help push it into into the tissues better. And so, we immediately sent that to her and she had a bunch of teachers and students. And so, they were like, "Oh my gosh, this stuff is just clearing it up." The next day, people were much better. So, it was originally something that was just for acute infections, which we're seeing some positive results with that.

You mean if I get the sniffles and feel like I'm starting to come down with something?

No, it would be an infection in the eye.

Infection in the eye specifically.

Okay. So, after making that, I started to think, "Well, why don't we put some gold?" And, I was able to source a really quality gold which was very difficult to find. And, I started to utilize it when I was sungazing and I just started to realize this is really magical because it's photobiomodulation. So, I'm at the beach, I'm grounding, I'm watching the sun come up, and I've got the rays of the sun coming through the silver, gold, and methylene blue. And, I was just noticing I was seeing a lot better and my brain felt like it was turned on.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. If any of you are listening and you haven't had a chance to do breathwork Dr. John style, we did this the other day. You do the methylene blue in the eyes while you're looking at the sun or red light. And then, we had a special minty oil stuff that he applied to our perineum to kind of The Root Zen. Yeah, called Root Zen. This is another one of his products. You put the Root Zen on your perineum, put the methylene blue in your eyes, and then you had the Breath Honey, which is— and I've been actually doing that when I oil pull in the morning, doing a couple drops of Breath Honey because it seems to really freshen up the mouth pulling, which I actually mouth pull or oil pull with ozone oil from this company called Simply O3. But I combine it with your Breath Honey now. And then when you are getting like up into a state where you're really ready to pull in all the energy and oxygen. You've got the Zen spray, which is very similar to hapé mixed with essential oils. It just blasts you off. And so, you've got the perineum, the eyes, the mouth, and the nose all locked in with special compounds for breathwork. You just got to come up with some for the ears now.

Yeah. Well, we're going to be launching Blue Ears.

No kidding. Yeah. Blue Ears. Sounds like a food stand at Disney or something.

Well, it'll be a similar drop that you can place into the ears. And, we're going to start doing some of our own research on the impact that that might have on hearing loss and tinnitus. And, as you know, we already are pioneering a lot of things with the inner ear with our SunaVe protocol, which is that Lumamed laser treatment that I brought here from Germany. And then, we started using stem cell injections into the ear. And so, we're using the combination of both of those. And of course, we want these patients to be taking methylene blue while they're going through the treatment. Yeah.

I talked with a couple people at your clinic. The dad was kind of doing a tour of everything and they said their hearing had actually improved from whatever protocol you were doing for hearing restoration, which is incredible. —so, and a lot of people don't, don't think that you can do that without an implant, you know, or hearing aid. So the, the, the thing with the eyes though, when you're doing the eye drops, is this related to the part of the brain that you're talking about, like the blue spot in the brain, or is that related to something different? So, well, the—

I, I'd love to dive into the blue spot. Um, the pineal through the suprachiasmic nucleus is going to have biggest impact with the blue eyes. Okay. So, the photons are going to pick up the signature of the substance and it's going to carry it through information back to the pineal. And, I think that's why there's more of a neurological effect that you feel when you do those drops. So, the locus coeruleus, it's in the brainstem, it's in the pons. So, it's a very primitive area of the brain. And, it's command central for stress basically. So, this is where it's the norepinephrine release in the brain, which is that neurotransmitter that excites, right? And, anybody that's had a lot of anxiety, they know sometimes too much norepinephrine is not so good. And, this is a real problem today is that a lot of people, they're overstressed, there's too much norepinephrine, the brain is too excited. And this causes a lot of premature neurodegeneration, a lot of different psych— psychiatric disorders and anxiety and phobias. And, and ultimately, I think our spiritual practice for all of us is the ability to be more deeply relaxed and more present in the moment. And this is going to be directly related to how well we can calm down the blue spot or the locus coeruleus. Because otherwise, that locus coeruleus is just— it's signaling all— any area in the brain that is going to be producing norepinephrine is going to be triggered by that blue spot. There's a frequency that the blue spot pulses at, right? And so, the faster it pulses, the more norepinephrine is released. The slower it pulses, the less, right? So, this is where when we meditate and we're really calm, we do breathwork, right? After breathwork that you're just in that Zen place, you are completely slowing down your blue spot, right? So, the blue spot also stores short-term memory. It's like a little thumb drive. So, as you're going through your day, you have experiences and you have that short-term memory of your experiences.. And, in order to consolidate those memories or integrate, like if you have— let's say you have a session with a psychologist and you take all that new information and you're trying to make sense of it and you want to take that information and integrate it with all the things that you've experienced before that to integrate it so that you can really learn. And, the ability for that memory consolidation to occur is where the short-term memory from the locus coeruleus gets put into the higher brain centers. And, in order for that to happen, the blue spot literally has to pause to 0.5 or 1. And, that happens at night and it happens during REM sleep. So, if an individual is not getting REM sleep and they're not adequately pausing their locus coeruleus, they're going to probably have problems with phobias. PTSD is really commonly related to this because you're perseverating over— like, you could have an experience where something really scares you and then you're just thinking about it over and over again. But if you're able to consolidate that and start to integrate it, you start to make sense of it and it kind of starts to take some of the norepinephrine release, right? Because you think about like, oh, the trauma and you get that hit and then the heart starts to beat.

That cell danger response type of syndrome that you were talking about, very similar to that.

Well, the cell danger response is at a cellular level with an energy production, but it's— it's just more on the nervous system level. It's related because these are all stressors, and all these stressors ultimately are going to shut down your life force. Because if you have a lot of norepinephrine, you're going to producing more inflammation in a lot of indirect ways. Okay. So, the locus coeruleus, how is that impacted by methylene blue or is it? Well, that's what's fascinating. So, I first was diving into the locus coeruleus when I wrote my book "It's All in Your Head" on endonasal balloon manipulations. And, what I was finding was when you breathe, your respiratory cycles would go and pace other centers in your brain. So, if you slow your breath down, it actually starts to entrain the locus coeruleus to start to beat slower. If you start breathing faster, that respiratory rhythm will speed up the pulsing of the locus coeruleus and you start to have more norepinephrine released. So, what happens is that a lot of us, our craniums start to collapse. It's a part— like Weston Price did a lot of research on this and he was able to see that primitive people had wider skulls. They had much wider opened nasal passage and those sensors are really high up in the nasal passage. And so, a lot of times people because their cranium and their nasal passage is smaller, you're not getting that signaling of that respiratory rate. And so, a lot of people could be suffering from anxiety and different types of conditions where there's overexcitability of the brain because the air is not getting up high enough. And so, what we do in my clinic is we take a balloon. You've experienced this. Yeah, it's fantastic. And, we do this expansion technique called functional cranial release.

Yeah. But, what's the methylene blue do to locus coeruleus or does it?

So, I was looking at this when I was writing the book and then I found this research on methylene blue where they were treating phobia patients and they would expose them to something that they're afraid of. Like, if you're afraid of spiders, they do exposure therapy. And, they found that they would give people one dose of methylene blue after the therapy session and it was enhancing memory consolidation. So, these people then could integrate that and the results were exponentially better. No kidding. So, anybody doing like—

And is that because you think it's actually slowing down that pulse rate of the locus coeruleus?

Okay. So, this is where it really gets fascinating. So, the locus coeruleus has very fragile mitochondria. The mitochondria are a little bit different than most areas of the brain. And one of the primary, and this might be rabbit-holing a little bit, But, the primary stressor that really affects the mitochondria in the locus coeruleus is endotoxins, lipopolysaccharides, which come from infections generally, right?

Infections or even eating foods that are a combination from what I understand of sugars and—

Like a gut dysbiosis. Foods.

Yeah, a lot of processed foods, packaged foods, added sugars, combinations of sugars and fats that you would find in a lot of modern processed products. And I believe seed oils as well contribute to lipopolysaccharides.

Yeah, I mean, it's a— it's— I think it's the primary cause of disease in the body because it's the most inflammatory substance. And once that inflammation shuts down the life force, disease expresses itself like we talked about in a unique way depending on our genes, right? So, what happens with the lipopolysaccharides with the mitochondria in the locus coeruleus is they produce this NOX2, which is a chemical that really shuts down the mitochondria. And so, because those mitochondria are fragile and the locus coeruleus, so it literally has— it's so chock-full of mitochondria, it's like 2 million mitochondria, kind of like the substantia nigra is really, really high, which is the— with Parkinson's disease, that's the area that goes south. Okay. So, we're talking about cells that are incredibly metabolic demanding, like a bunch of mitochondria because they need so much energy. And so, when our mitochondria start to go south and they're not as effective like we talked about earlier, then the locus coeruleus starts to have some problems. So, methylene blue goes in there and enhances mitochondria, and therefore, you have an enhancement with the blue spot in the locus coeruleus.

Ben Greenfield: Interesting. And, does it— not necessarily related to locus coeruleus but just in general, do you think methylene blue impacts sleep? Because I've seen some information that doesn't, I feel like it energizes me and keeps me up a little bit. Maybe I just have low tolerance. I don't know.

Well, you took it at night.

Yeah. Yeah. I recently actually— yeah, this was a few nights ago at your place. I took one of your melatonin products, but it had some methylene blue in it. I don't feel like I slept as well than when I take melatonin without methylene blue. So, is methylene blue something that's contraindicated for everybody for sleep or is it just certain people who are sensitive to it?

Well, I've worked with a lot of patients and such with methylene blue, and I, I have not seen many people at all have a problem with losing sleep with methylene blue. I think that when I have, it's usually somebody when they first start taking it. Okay. And so then, you know, all of a sudden you get this boost of energy, you know, at the inappropriate time. So taking it in the morning would be best when you first start, and then it's likely that once you get used to it, you're not going to have a problem at night. But, you have to feel it out for yourself. Everybody's going to be a little bit different.

Ben Greenfield: And, walk me through just because I'm curious how this works for you. You're such a wealth of information on methylene blue. Let's say somebody wanted to start using it. What would be a great protocol that might even include different delivery mechanisms like the blue eyes or the bar or something like that? Let's say I wake up, I'm like, "Okay, I want to start trying out this Methylene Blue stuff, what's a good way to start?

Well, so we talked about the delivery. You're going to want to do it orally where you're going to get the release in the stomach.

First thing as soon as you wake up or you wait a little while?

Before lunch. Okay. Yeah.

But, if you were going to do red light or light therapy in the morning, which a lot of people do within an hour of waking, you would ideally do it pretty soon after waking.

Well, that's why I like to take it before I go to bed. Oh, I wake up, I wake up, I go in the hyperbaric chamber. Yeah, you know, and there's a real synergy with— you had asked earlier about things that are synergistic. Methylene blue and hyperbaric oxygen are epic. Yeah, the combination of the, the, like, a red light panel or a sauna, hyperbaric oxygen with methylene blue is just—

I think that'd be, that'd be like a protocol if you had access to an infrared sauna and a hyperbaric chamber. You'd take methylene Blue and then you do the sauna, I would imagine first because that'll vasodilate things a little bit and then maybe rinse off real quick before you get into your hyperbaric and then do a hyperbaric session.

Exactly. We call it the Mito Red Blue O2. And, we're literally going to launch a whole section at mitozen.club.

I don't think I've actually ever tried things intentionally in that order, but I might need to give this a go now. Yeah. That's interesting because I noticed you have your sauna right up next to your hyperbaric chamber.

Yeah.

And, a refrigerator full of methylene blue.

Jason Sonners, he's an expert with hyperbaric. And then, Brian Richards with SaunaSpace, we're collaborating and we're going to be putting out a lot of content helping people to kind of create some of these biohacking, if you will, or healing situations at their home. Because I think this is empowering people to elevate their health to a level that I don't know any other protocol call that would be as powerful as this.

Yeah. Well, it's pretty incredible. Do you ever get tired of me calling you the Dr. Strange of medicine? No, of course not. Well, I have to admit, even though I didn't really mention it at the beginning of the show, the name of John's clinic is Advanced Rejuvenation in Sarasota. I think it's well worth a visit. John and I are getting into this habit of throwing an event there now. What was this, the second annual Elements of Vitality event? Where you get to come and guinea pig and try out all the protocols and even arrive early or stay later and do some of the stuff John does with his patients. But, I would recommend that if you want kind of the trifecta of mind-blowing information from John in addition to this episode, listen to the other ones that I did with him, which I'll link to in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/MagicBullet. And, if you want to try, I'm going to be a little commercial here for you, John. So my apologies in advance. I would say that of John's products, the ones that I tend to use the most is the melatonin suppository. If you don't like suppositories, the melatonin oral product called Sandman at night. If I have any day where I want the equivalent of an NAD IV without getting an IV, I do the NAD suppository in the morning. And, some people can't hold a suppository in all day, but You told me most of it gets absorbed in a couple hours. So, if I put it in when I get up at 5:00 a.m. and I'm not using the bathroom until 7:30 or 8:00, I'm still getting a bunch of NAD in my system. So, the Sandman, the NAD. For breathwork, I really dig the Zen spray, but I'm going to start trying the—

The Breath Honey and the Root Zen.

Breath Honey and the Root Zen now because I didn't really understand how to use those. And, I've been doing the session with you plus the methylene blue in the eyes. And then, the last one that I would say I probably use the most is just the little bar that I just took because it has all the other stuff you talked about in it, the probiotics and the lutein and the— what's it called? The riboflavin, the EGCG. So yeah, it's pretty incredible. So, if you guys want to, I'll put a link to John's store and you can go shop around and check stuff out. And, go ahead, John.

Well, one thing that I'd like to just say is we did this epic breathwork on Siesta Beach the other day and we recorded it.

That's right.

And, we're going to put that at mitozen.club. At mitozen.club. And so, you're going to have a link to that. And so, it's a $10 lifetime membership fee to enter that. And, we have the full line of products that are available to club members.

And so certain people can't buy some of these products, but if you're part of the club, you can.

You have— yeah, you have to become— it's kind of cheap, $10 a year. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. So, so, um, we have— I do— I have done breathwork sessions with a number of really cool people, and we post them. And so it's free to members. So if you're wanting to, like, kind of delve into using these products and how I use them during breathwork, join, you know.

Who else did you do sessions with?

I got Gary Brecka. I got Garrett McNamara in there, CJ Macias.

Yeah, there's, there's some cool people. Yeah. Awesome. Well, John, incredible amount of information as usual. You always take me down these rabbit holes that I don't expect, but I learn stuff from you every week. So, thanks for being you. Thanks for being weird and keep up the great work, man. Yeah. And for everybody listening, tuning in. Go to bengreenfieldlife.com/magicbullet. And, uh, what do you think, man? Go play some pickleball with some methylene blue in our systems? Let's do it. All right, let's do it. Want free access to comprehensive show notes, my weekly roundup, cutting-edge research and articles, my top recommendations for everything that you need to hack your life, and much more? Visit bengreenfieldlife.com.

¡Hola!

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